Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/372

 352 grieved not to get so much of it. Its absence is explained in part by the fact that there were rarely original settlements corresponding to the present names. These are taken rather from ranches, springs, or mines in the neighborhood. On the arrival of the Americans in California there were but thirteen thousand Spanish, or Mexicans, all told, while the territory was as large as New York, Pennsylvania, and the six New England States put together.

Let us believe that the pleasing designations will act as a stimulus, and these communities will live up to their names in time, as they never could have done were they simply Smithville and Jonesville.

The impressions at San José, and in the country at large, resulting from a second visit a month later, were more agreeable. Something like the proper point of view had then been attained. The face of nature was to be parched, and the towns rather commonplace; but the continued cloudlessness of the sky, and quality of the air, were more, and the peculiar form of pleasure was settled where it belonged.

The district of villa residences of the millionnaires, when penetrated, gained much in attractiveness. There are white-oaks and chestnut-oaks, as well as scrub-oaks, in groups of a park-like appearance, and live-oaks, with long, gray Spanish moss depending from them. If there are no wild flowers, there are plenty of the cultivated sort, with lawns kept green by fountains and hose. Where there is water, the winter, or brown season, need never extend.

As a rule, long stretches of white picket-fence surround the places, and the houses themselves are white.

The bonanza kings have been invested with a greater air of magnificence than really belongs to them. Their places cost them immense sums, it is true, but a reduction